Building up the courage to confess your feelings to your crush and asking them out on a date can be a nerve-wrecking experience, but thanks to the unique services offered by Japanese company Kokunavi, it doesn’t have to be. If you’re too shy to approach your crush, you can just pay them to do it on your behalf.

True to its name – a mashup between the Japanese word “kokuhaku” (confession of love) and “navigation” –  Kokunavi is committed to helping shy people make their feelings known to their crushes without having to go through the emotionally distressing experience of actually confessing their crush. Basically, Kokunavi will have someone else approach the client’s crush and convey a romantic message on their behalf. Think of it like having a friend deliver a love letter to your high school crush, if that friend charged a lot of money to do it.

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A Malaysian woman ended up with a pet duck after buying a fertilized egg from a restaurant and using a makeshift incubator to hatch it instead of eating it.

39-year-old Erica Lim, a creative professional from Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia, recently sat down with online magazine Star2 to talk about life with a pet duck in a high-rise apartment building. She spoke about Daisy’s love of water, her friendly and adventurous nature, and how she adapted to life in the big city, but Erica’s most interesting revelation was the story of how the duck came into this world. Apparently, she was meant to be eaten as “balut”, a controversial Asian snack that consists of a cooked partially-developed duck embryo.

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Can you imagine wearing only one color every day for three and a half decades? Abou Zakkour, a 68-year-old man from the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo has become known as the Yellow Man after wearing only yellow for the last 35 years.

The story of the Yellow Man of Aleppo started on January 25, 1983, when Abou Zakkour made the decision to only wear yellow, because in his eyes the color represented love. It’s unclear what he did with his old wardrobe, but from that day forward, Zakkour only wore yellow garments, including underwear and accessories like neckties and hats, as well as yellow footwear. Even his umbrella and smartphone cover are yellow. And when he couldn’t find something to match his attire, he simply took a bottle of yellow nail polish and painted the differently-colored item to fit his Yello Man persona.

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The Lion House is a unique rentable property in South Africa that allows tourists to spend their vacation in the middle of a nature reserve, surrounded by 77 adult lions.

Imagine going to sleep to the sound of lion roars, knowing that the only thing standing between you and dozens of predators is an electrified fence. If that sounds like the kind of thing you’ve always dreamed of, you’d better start saving for a stay at the Lion House, a special three-bedroom house located in the middle of a wildlife sanctuary in Harrismith, South Africa. It doesn’t feature many of the amenities you’d expect to find in a place that costs over $100 a night to rent, like TV or air-conditioning, but it does offer something very few, if any, other places around the world have – lions, 77 of them to be exact.

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Looking at the artworks bellow, you could swear they the charcoal drawings of a talented artist, but they’re actually not drawings at all, but hair paintings, and they’re hand-made not by an artist, but a skilled hairdresser.

Allen Chen, who works as a hairdresser at the XB Hair Professional salon in Changhua, China, recently became an internet sensation in his home country, after photos and videos of his incredibly detailed hair paintings went viral online. His latest masterpiece, a “hairy” portrayal of Romance of the Three Kingdoms heroes Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fey has been massively shared on Weibo, and videos of the young hairdresser carefully arranging the hair trimming to create the three characters have already been viewed millions of times. And looking at the quality of these artworks, it’s easy to see why everyone is so impressed by Allen’s talent.

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Food waste is one the greatest challenges of our time, and fruits and vegetables are particularly problematic, as an estimated 52% of harvests go bad before reaching consumers. But one Malaysian company claims to have come up with a simple and effective solution to this problem – a tiny sticker that keeps fruits from spoiling for up to two weeks.

You’ve probably seen stickers on fruits before, but not like the ones created by Stixfresh. Those common stickers are used solely to provide consumers with information about the grower and how the fruit was grown, but Stixfresh has a completely different purpose. It contains a special, all-natural formula that slows down the ripening process, keeping the fruit fresh and juicy for much longer.

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Yesterday, during the opening of Russia’s annual “PROJECT” scientific forum in the city of Yaroslavl, the audience got to see Boris, a highly-advanced robot that major news channel Russia24 called “the country’s most modern robot”. Only Boris wasn’t really all that advanced, or even a robot, for that matter.

Very similar in appearance to Honda’s famous Asimo humanoid robot, Boris can reportedly walk and talk, do mathematical calculations and even dance, feats he demonstrated on the stage of the “PROJECT” forum, on December 11. The audience, made up primarily of young students, was blown away by the Russian robot’s advanced capabilities, as were several news outlets, including Russia24, which dedicated a news segment to Boris, showcasing his performance at the forum and calling it “Russia’s most modern robot”.

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A talented food artist from Japan has getting a lot of attention on Instagram for her ability to turn plates into delicious works of art by painting them with melted chocolate.

Most parents often tell their children not to play with their food, but if the melted chocolate of Japanese artist Norico are any indication, playing with your food can lead to some spectacular results. Using only her fingers and some basic kitchen utensils, Norico can painting anything from portraits of Japanese celebrities and popular cartoon characters, to abstract geometric motifs and wedding reception messages. The ephemeral nature of her art allows Norico to experiment at her heart;s desire, and in her Instagram and YouTube videos she often cleans her unusual canvas several times after creating some exceptional painting and start all over again.

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The Amazon rainforest is home to many frightening creatures, like giant Anacondas, flesh-eating piranhas, just to name a couple, and now you can add a new one to the list, a species of wasp that lays its eggs on the abdomen of spiders and then hijacks their brain, essentially turning them into zombies.

The previously unknown wasp of the Zatypota genus was discovered by researchers with the University of British Columbia (UBC) working in the Ecuadorian Amazon basin. They documented its symbiotic relationship with a species of so called “social spiders” and recently published some truly terrifying findings in the Ecological Entomology scientific journal. This newly discovered wasp is apparently able to hijack the nervous system of its host, forcing it to leave its colony, which it otherwise rarely does, protect the wasps larva and ultimately get eaten alive. It essentially turns the social spider into a zombie-like drone that then does the wasp’s bidding.

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Dozens of families in and around the city of Cairns, in Australia, have been forced to temporarily abandon their homes after flying foxes started dropping dead on their properties due to the unbearable heat.

Cairns residents started reporting massive numbers of spectacled flying foxes dropping out of trees on Monday, when temperatures in Australia’s Queensland region rose to above 40 degrees Celsius. According to animal experts, the nocturnal mammals cannot sustain an internal temperature of over 40 degrees, and with no way to cool off, their organs start to shut down and they eventually die. Wildlife rescuers have been working around the clock, using using spray bottles and drippers too cool off and hydrate the helpless creatures, but there’s only so much they can do. The flying fox colonies in the Cairns area have already sustained heavy losses and the number of fatalities is expected to rise for as long as the heatwave continues. But apart from the environmental issues, the massive number of dead bats rotting away so close to people’s houses has now become a become a serious public health issue as well.

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Over the last month, hundreds of pastors from all over the Netherlands have taken turns holding non-stop service at a Protestant church in the Hague, where a family of Armenian refugees scheduled for deportation has taken shelter. Dutch law prevents police from entering places of worship during prayers, and religious leaders are determined to continue the service for as long as it takes authorities to reconsider their decision.

The Tamrazyan family fled their native Armenia in 2009, after receiving death threats due to the father’s political activism. They sought asylum in the Netherlands and after going through a seven-year application process, a judge granted the family asylum. However, the Dutch Government successfully appealed that decision in court, and in September, Sasun Tamrazyan, his wife Anousche and their three children were officially notified that their asylum status had been lifted. No longer feeling safe in the asylum center they had been assigned to, the Tamrazyan family sought shelter at the Gereformeerde Kerk (GKV) church, in Katwijk, of which they had become members three years ago. They were welcome with open arms.

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The South African Government has sparked outrage around the world after it was reported that it plans to auction off a confiscated white lion to raise funds for the country’s nation conservation department. Animal activists claim that the buyers will likely be wealthy hunters looking for easy trophies or businessmen involved in the lion bone trade.

Mufasa the white lion was confiscated as a cub from a private owner three years ago, and placed in the care of WildForLife, an animal rehabilitation charity in northern South Africa. Despite numerous requests to have Mufasa relocated to a wildlife conservation sanctuary which offered to care for Mufasa and his companion, Suraya, free of charge for the rest of their lives, government officials refused. To make matters worse, a few months ago WildForLife was notified by the South African Government that the rare white lion was going to be auctioned off to private buyers in order to raise funds for the nature conservation department. The charity has been involved in a legal battle to save Mufasa ever since.

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As if habitat loss and pesticide exposure weren’t enough to deal with for bumble bees, they also face increasing pressure from a parasitic fly that attacks them midair, injects them with eggs with hatch larvae which proceed to eat the pollinators from the inside before finally forcing them to dig their own graves.

It sounds like something out of a body snatchers horror movie, but the conopid fly is very much a real-life threat for bumble bee colonies already under a lot of pressure from human activities. The conopid fly is classified as a parasitoid, a parasite that not only feeds on its host, but ends up killing it in a gruesome, terrifying way. We’ve featured creepy body snatchers in the past, some that turn their host into zombies, others that simply take control of their bodies but leave their brains intact, but the conopid fly is even worse. It literally eats bumble bees from the inside, before somehow forcing them to land on the ground and dig a whole to die in. The injected parasite grows inside the host and ultimately bursts out of it as a mature conopid fly that attacks other bumble bees and continues this nightmarish cycle.

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If you’re familiar with horse reigning, you probably know about the sliding stop, a signature move where the galloping horse lowers its hindquarters as it comes to halt. It’s definitely impressive to watch, but it’s nothing compared to the Mexican version, the Cala de Caballo.

Cala de Caballo is one of several “charras” performed by charros (the Mexican equivalent of the cowboy) in charrerias, popular competitive events similar to the American rodeo. It involves a series of maneuvers, like turning the horse on its own axis both ways a minimum of six times, and walking backwards in a straight line, but the most impressive one has to be the sliding stop, where the charro makes his horse run at full speed and then stop abruptly by sliding on its rear legs, in a marked 20-meter-long rectangle. The competitor who leaves the longest slide marks in the marked area without going over the limit gets the most points.

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Jesse Rix has been tattooing since 2005 and specializes in a wide range of styles, from realism to nature pieces, but it’s hid geometric, three-dimensional optical illusion tattoos that really get people talking. Some of his works are so trippy that you could swear you’re looking at a fantastic world underneath a person’s skin.

In most of his incredible tattooed optical illusions, Rix uses geometrical shapes like hexagons and cubes to “remove” pieces of skin from his subjects and reveal the colorful world beneath. However, his art and skills are constantly evolving, as shown in some of his latest works, which feature windows inked on to his subjects through which you can see the universe beneath their skin. The New Hampshire-based artist is obviously a master of the trompe-l’œil technique, and some of his tattoos are so insanely realistic they can be kind of creepy to look at.

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